CalPERS gets a little good news

Recently snatched garment bag of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has been recovered and is in the hands Mayor Newsom spokesman, Nathan Ballard, in San Francisco Calif., on Tuesday, October 13, 2009.

Recently snatched garment bag of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has been recovered and is in the hands Mayor Newsom spokesman, Nathan Ballard, in San Francisco Calif., on Tuesday, October 13, 2009.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

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Recently snatched garment bag of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has been recovered and is in the hands Mayor Newsom spokesman, Nathan Ballard, in San Francisco Calif., on Tuesday, October 13, 2009.

Recently snatched garment bag of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has been recovered and is in the hands Mayor Newsom spokesman, Nathan Ballard, in San Francisco Calif., on Tuesday, October 13, 2009.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

CalPERS gets a little good news

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Having chronicled much of the bad news befalling the California Public Employees' Retirement System of late - the fund's chief investment officer, Joseph Dear, has described it as an "assault on our reputation" - it's time for some good news.

This week, CalPERS reported a 22.3 percent jump over the past year in the value of its holdings, bringing the assets of the nation's largest public pension fund to $225 billion. This was thanks largely to an overall rise in equity and fixed-income markets.

"Conditions remain fragile to be sure, but confidence is strengthening, and that is an enormously positive development," Dear said in remarks to the CalPERS board.

He didn't say much about the source of a big part of the assault on the fund's reputation, CalPERS' real estate holdings, but said "major restructuring initiatives are under way" in that portfolio.

Poor-mouthing: But there's more salt being rubbed in that wound. On Tuesday, CalPERS said it couldn't afford to pay for the cleanup of a Boston condo and hotel complex it pulled the plug on earlier this month, losing $91.2 million on its investment. In a letter to Massachusetts authorities, CalPERS and its real estate partner, WinnCompanies, said they only have $1.5 million to $2 million in assets remaining in the partnership, less than half what the state estimates it will cost to restore the property to its original state.

Surely, a Boston correspondent wrote to me, CalPERS - with $13.7 billion in real estate, and total assets of $225 billion - can do better than that.

Fly me to the moonshine: Who wouldn't "Wanna Go Through SFO" once you've seen the ad on YouTube, in which, as The Chronicle's City Insider describes it, "smiley flight attendants ride scooters through the (newer, far more spacious international) terminal," compared with the ad's "bad airport" with "a scary-looking vending machine and evil baggage carousels rip(ping) apart teddy bears"?

'Course, it would help if you could go through the Bay Area's premier airport in a more expeditious manner.

But then we do have Gavin Newsomstarring as a taxi dispatcher gallantly opening the cab door with a smiling, "Welcome to SFO!" for a delighted (and blond) arriving passenger. "Yes, that's our mayor multitasking," said one of his spokesmen.

And, should things not work out lieutenant-governor-wise, it doesn't hurt to have another skill in your back pocket.

-- Newsom's former chief media go-to guy, Nathan Ballard, has found life after City Hall. He's just been named managing director in Burson-Marsteller's San Francisco office.

We can't say whether this is out of the frying pan and into the fire for Ballard, who resigned in November after serving as Newsom's communications director for three years. The global public relations firm, a unit of Young & Rubicam, says that clients engage it "when the stakes are high: during a crisis, a brand launch or any period of fundamental change or transition."

Ballard says he'll be "working with a range of businesses found in California and the Bay Area, where tech companies flourish. Burson has a strong presence in Asia, and I aim to build on that strength with clients who do business on both sides of the Pacific."

In your Face(book): Who needs reality TV when you can air your marital dirty laundry in front of Facebook's 400 million members?

"Whether through nagging wall posts or antagonistic changes to their 'relationship status,' the social-networking site is proving to be as good for broadcasting marital discord as it is for sharing vacation photos," the New York Timesreports in one of its tech trend pieces.

Here, for example, is Leah Ackerman-Hurst, 34, "a soon-to-be nursing student" in Alameda. She tells the Times "she occasionally uses Facebook to vent to her friends about her husband, Caleb. In a recent status update, she called him 'Jerky McJerk Jerk' after he insisted she get rid of their pug."

Many of her friends, shockingly, took the spat quite seriously, even though Ackerman-Hurst insisted, according to the Times, "the comments are meant as jokes (mostly)."

And you thought "The Marriage Ref" was winning the race to the bottom.